Politics

Obama Making Push for Young Voters

Campaign pursues key demographic early in hopes of Election Day payoff.

President Obama's relection banks on the youth vote like one that drew enthusiastic supporters to a rally in Roanoke, Va., in October 2008(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

With young Americans' enthusiasm for President Obama and politics in general down from four years ago, the candidate that swept the youth vote in 2008 is making a concerted effort to get that same constituency to turn out for him this year.

No longer able to rely on promises of hope and change, Obama is starting early to offer young voters his vision of concrete solutions that he’ll be able to tout further into the campaign. The White House this week announced 110,000 new summer jobs for “low-income and disconnected youth” as a part of its Summer Jobs+ initiative, with almost 100 new companies and nonprofits and a number of new cities and federal agencies signing on to the initiative.

The Summer Jobs+ initiative is a political two-fer for the president: It allows him to appeal to young voters, and to hammer home the idea that he’s working to act – to move “forward,” perhaps – in contrast to a "Do-Nothing" Congress. The White House release touting the Summer Jobs+ initiative made sure to mention that the idea to increase youth employment was Obama’s own, and was included in the American Jobs Act, which Congress never passed. Most of the jobs are unpaid.

The attack against an obstructionist Congress is old hat for the Obama, but it seems his campaign is just getting started with its push for youth support.

“There’s a whole new rise of young voters who weren’t eligible to vote,” Godsay said.

Up for grabs are the 4.3 million young Americans who will turn 18 before the elections, according to a CIRCLE analysis of U.S. sensus data, not including the number of 17-year-olds that will be eligible to vote in some states with lower voting ages.

With the most recent nationwide poll giving Obama just a 6-point lead over Mitt Romney with voters nationwide, neither candidate can afford to ignore an already substantial, and growing, demographic. The Obama campaign is tackling two subsets of that demographic right now – those planning to get, or who already have, a college education, and those who have no higher-education plans. It’s a wise move on his part, because as a CIRCLE analysis shows, students without a college degree turned out slightly more in support of Obama (66 percent) than those with a college degree (65 percent.)

“Young people without college experience turned out at the highest rate [in 2008] since ’86,” Godsay explained, adding that those voters were primarily low-income – the exact group Obama’s Summer Jobs+ initiative aims to help.

To appeal to the other subset, those planning to or attending college, Obama is engaging in an incessant offensive on student loan rates. He gave three speeches at three different universities recently calling on Congress to extend the freeze on student-loan rates, but what he didn’t say was that many of the students he was talking to would barely be affected by a rise in rates. Only subsidized Stafford Loans, and only those taken out after July 1, 2012, will see a rise in rates – a concern for students taking out new loans for continuing education, not those who already have them.

That may be why he turned to the young crowd on Friday, speaking at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Va., about student loans to a group of juniors and seniors and their parents.

The push to keep rates low is bipartisan, and has been supported by Romney as well. But Obama may have a jump on the messaging, and he doesn’t plan to let the issue die: The White House announced that next week, Vice President Joe Biden and a number of administration officials will hold events throughout the nation to echo Obama’s offensive on student loans.

And that could ultimately make all the difference. Matthew Segal, cofounder of youth-mobilization organization Our Time, said that Obama’s discussion of youth issues makes sense now due to the timing of issues particular to young voters.

“It’s that time of year when there’s generally more of a media narrative” surrounding the younger demographic, with school ending and young people getting summer jobs, he said.

But Segal cautioned that all of Obama’s efforts right now won’t be enough come fall. He’ll have to continue the outreach right up through Election Day if he wants to turn out what’s typically been his most supportive demographic.

“It must continue, and it must start now. There is nothing worse than when candidates do their desperate last-minute outreach to those constituency groups,” he said.